But I needn’t have worried, because the old familiar Pat is back! He is at his best (i.e., most crazy) when he is answering questions from viewers of his TV show and is speaking off the cuff and giving advice on things like romance. That is when his inner crazy, never far from the surface, bubbles up and he utters with the most bizarre stuff.

In this clip, he responds to a question as to why these days miracles seem to occur only in Africa and not the US.

“People overseas didn’t go to Ivy League schools,” the TV preacher said, laughing. “We’re so sophisticated, we think we’ve got everything figured out. We know about evolution, we know about Darwin, we know about all these things that says God isn’t real.”

“We have been inundated with skepticism and secularism,” he continued. “And overseas, they’re simple, humble. You tell ‘em God loves ‘em and they say, ‘Okay, he loves me.’ You say God will do miracles and they say, ‘Okay, we believe him.'”

“And that’s what God’s looking for. That’s why they have miracles.”

Robertson is a master at ‘effing the ineffable‘, claiming detailed knowledge of what god likes and wants. But what is worse is that he makes out that Africans are dopes who simply accept what he tells them about god. Furthermore, it makes no sense that god would avoid doing miracles in those parts of the world where there is greater skepticism. Surely that is precisely where he should do them, in order to confound the skeptics?

But his underlying message is correct, that the more people get educated and learn about science, the less likely they are to be gullible about alleged miracles. So we have to credit him with realizing that, however offensively he says it.